The myth of the status quo

I’ve said it before. You’ve said it before. “Things will get back to normal soon.” The trouble is, every time normal comes around again, it’s different from the normal that was before. Life always seems to be changing, and yet we so often think that the way things are now, are the way they will always be. The myth of the status quo is that everything will continue the same, even when we know that everything changes.

This is true both on a personal level, as well as at an industrial level, with no better example than the Welsh slate industry. I was on holiday in the summer in North Wales and visited the old Dinorwic slate quarry near Llanberis. The National Slate Museum is housed in the disused workshops of the quarry, on the shore of Llyn Padarn, at the foot of the mountain that is now cut with galleries, slate cliffs and almost unending piles of slag waste. The introductory video to the museum opens by saying that whilst it was a criminal offence to steal a sheep from the mountain, the quarry existed to steal the mountain itself, which was not only legal but was the basis of the economy of the area.

Slate mining in north Wales has been happening since Roman times, but it was the industrial revolution that really started the industry as we know it. The commercial quarry at Dinorwic started in 1787 and reached its peak output of 100,000 tonnes of slate at the end of the 19th Century. I’m sure at this point the quarry owners, slate workers, their families and the communities built around the quarries would not have thought that it could ever end. And yet only 69 years into the 20th Century, the quarry had closed for good, ending nearly 200 years of production.

The reasons for the decline of Welsh slate are complex, but are likely linked to inefficient working practices, international competition and different roofing materials. During a demonstration of slate splitting by a worker who had come from many generations of slate workers before him, he surprised me by saying that historically only 8% of the quarried material ended up being exported as usable slate. 92% of all the labour and effort went into to creating piles of useless slag. He went on to say that modern slate quarries can’t afford to waste anything and have learned to adapt. All of the waste slag is used, from the larger bits of rock for sea defences, to fine aggregates for road building.

International competition is also very strong. Inferior quality slates are available at a fraction of the cost of Welsh slate, and perhaps to the untutored eye look the same, but do not last for anything like the 100 years guaranteed by the Welsh quarries.

At its peak, the Welsh slate industry likely looked unstoppable, perhaps even viewed as indispensable for the world. But things changed, the status quo of the dominance of Welsh slate shifted, to leave silent galleries and rusting infrastructure, still to be seen today as a monument to its demise.

The closure of the Dinorwic slate mine, however, opened a modern opportunity. In 1974, only five years after the closure of the quarry, work started on the construction of Dinorwig Power Station, a pumped hydro scheme that has helped balance the national grid since its opening in 1984. Many of the other abandoned slate mines are now repurposed for leisure activities, including the fastest zip line in the world just over the hill from Dinorwic.

There is surely a lesson here for the modern energy industry. Maybe we feel like we rule the world and are unshakeable, that we can let prices go as high as they like and people will still pay. But we will change and will continue to change, and we need to be ready for that. We are a very young industry compared to many others, so what does the future hold? Clearly people will always need some form of energy, but what form will that energy be? Will electricity always be the favoured form of energy? Will networks always be required? Will large scale generation ever be completely replaced by small scale generation at the point of use? We certainly can’t answer these questions at the moment, but don’t believe the myth of the status quo – things will always change.